Fortuneteller
by paradiso
Summary: Orphans have neither time nor patience for fairy tails and magic. We’re not big on pet psychics either.


**Fortuneteller **

"Anything else I can do for you Stella?" asks Lindsay, though it's not so much an actual question as it is a courtesy at ten to midnight on a Friday.

"No," I tell her, and she conceals her relief as she slides into her green jacket and heads out to forget about the job.

Right, the job. I shake my head and think that she's excited to get out of this eggshell-white prison the same way that we all are at the end of the day. Or the _days._ Still, it's going on two before I even think about going home to my pristine apartment, but that's partially because I'm so exhausted, I don't even want to get out of this chair.

It's lame, and it's stupid, I think, for me to go on and on about the obligations of New York's finest. But when you get to be my age, and you're cold and lonely and wear neutral tones (never green) because you haven't got time for the emotional effects of colour, you start to wonder why you bother with the job at all. The lab is silent, and it fills me up inside when I realize that upstairs somewhere in his empty glass box, there's a man with a pile of paper in front of him. He won't leave until I'm gone.

I walk past his office, _tradition_ I tell myself. Yeah, right. And there's Mac in his chair looking profound and just as tired as I am. Sleepy, even. Except that "sleepy" isn't a word that you'd use with Mac.

"You look sleepy," he says before I even know that he knows that I'm there, with the door open.

"Thanks," I smile half-heartedly.

"I didn't mean..." he rubs his face with one hands, a glimmer of shyness peeking over his thumb.

It's adorable.

"Lindsay," he begins, and suddenly I know this night is far from over.

"What about her, Mac?"

"You don't think..."

"Think what?"

"She's just-"

"Yeah, I know."

Lindsay's young. I mean, they're all young. But I think seeing Lindsay scuttling around the lab all day long, prattling on about DNA and evidence and practically spilling over with enthusiasm for the most disgustingly fascinating things she's ever seen, hits Mac hard. She's a teenager at heart, still one part curiosity, two parts invincibility. It's a recipe for disaster.

I feel bad, placing Lindsay – or Danny, or Sheldon the medical examiner – into these little plastic moulds of who they will become. I like to think that they are variables, that they'll stray from the paths of others, but more often then not, they remain constant and my predictions come true.

But you know, they don't always. We don't _all_ end up old, bitter cat ladies with a string of bad relationships and an unrivaled love for Jane Austen to show for all our years of career-driven ambition. We don't all end up like this widowed marine who still sleeps in Beirut from time to time. Some of us find light in the darkest reaches of the job, some of us defy the equation.

Take _Sid_ for example...

"And Danny," says Mac and he shakes his head.

"Just stop it," I interrupt even though I know he wasn't going to continue, "We're better than this."

He's a little embarrassed at my words. I'm _completely_ embarrassed of course, this is Mac, here in front of me at two in the morning, with his tie loosened and the collar of his shirt limp around his neck. And all we have the strength to imitate fortune cookies in the lives of our subordinates. But then I'm reminded of a would-be teenage Stella Bonasera, jumping on her bed, painting her nails so she can wipe them clean and paint them again, gossiping about the kids at school. This makes me smile, even though at seventeen, this perfect alter-ego made me cry every night.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to upset you."

I'm beyond the point of consolation though, so even when he reaches out and touches my elbow gently, I feel as though I'm being burned. I'm ashamed that I looked at Lindsay ten years down the road and only saw myself. Lindsay deserves better than that.

_So do I_, I think to myself wryly, _So does Mac._

Mac more than anyone deserves to be happy. Instead he chooses to be loyal to his job, and is therefore loyal to tragedy. I think that maybe, Mac loves life. He loves life more than most people do because he's seen it cut short before his very eyes. He still sees it, every day, every night, so he cherishes it more than anything. Life is Mac's true love, but tragedy is his mistress. Breathing is great, but it's asphyxiation that makes us all employable. It's what we eat, sleep, breathe and thrive off of. Without death, we would have no livelihood at all.

* * *

The next night, and for a few weeks afterwards, it's Sheldon Hawkes who keeps me company after ten, and then bids me farewell at midnight. Meanwhile Mac, in his office, muses that the examiner's fortune grows bleak as his clearance to work in the field becomes more and more clear.

"Here it is," says Hawkes, no, _Sheldon_, I tell myself, "Trace amounts of cyanide."

Cyanide. Of course, cyanide.

"Mhm," I mutter and glance up from my microscope.

He says nothing, just continues what he's doing. I look up then, there's a little smile on his face because he's proud of his work, despite my lack of enthusiasm or praise for it. He smiles to himself, eyes lit up with a strange glow that's generally foreign to this time of night. But then he can't contain himself, and the smile grows into a grin and then a little laugh as he begins to pack it in.

What a brilliant mind.

"Taking a cab?" I ask without even realizing it.

"How'd you know?" he looks at me blankly but then smiles again, "You didn't hear any keys," he rubs the sides of his pockets.

"You're brilliant," I tell him, not because he doesn't already know, but because it makes _me_ feel better to get it out into the open.

"You too Stella."

"I'll give you a ride, if you're willing to wait."

He accepts with a gracious chuckle, and then helps me look over my paperwork one more time. He then waits at the door patiently, as I complete my nightly ritual and bid Mac farewell before heading back downstairs.

Hawkes does not ask questions during the ride home, but he speaks absentmindedly of his failed transmission and the dejected Toyota sitting in the garage. I laugh a little at his fondness for his vehicle and then pat the steering wheel gently because I love mine too.

_This is nice_, I realize just as we drive past a sushi place and Hawkes starts babbling – intellectually of course – about the wonders of sashimi and how ironic it is that the most popular Japanese food is named after the Golden State.

"We should get sushi sometime," I say.

"Why don't you take Mac?" he replies a little too quickly, and I'm surprised by his lapse in judgment, but not enough to be angry and ruin the evening altogether, "Sorry."

His words are sturdy and sincere, unlike Mac's, which are always cautious. I forgive Sheldon easily because of his boldness in both the fault and the apology, it feels good to know that his message is one-hundred percent clear, with no underlying remorse hidden cleverly hidden in order to haunt me at night.

"Goodnight, Hawkes," I say quietly, "And good luck in the field."

He grins at me one more time, and I realize that I've hinted at his promotion only to see the pearly smile just one more time in the evening. I wonder as I drive home, if tragedy will get the best of him someday, or if he's too smart to ever become bitter and jaded. He certainly _seems_ too smart to let himself fall. Too smart to just wait, and wait for something good to come along and give him a real reason to live. He might even be smart enough to start looking for it right away. I wonder what I can do to urge him along.

I have hope for Detective Hawkes.

* * *

Danny is my favourite.

He can be a little exasperating sometimes. He has a little less tact than Hawkes and is a little more gutsy than Lindsay, but he's the most unpredictable, and that's what makes him fun to work with. The fact that I'd be lying if I said that those pretty eyes and boyish grin didn't charm me just a little during our first few cases together, drives me crazy sometimes. But I push the thought aside in favor of chastising Danny when he even suggests that I loosen up a little and flirt back. It's all in good fun really. It just would've been nice to have had a Danny Messer around ten, maybe fifteen years ago.

It's almost a relief that I can escape to the serious, no-nonsense aura that surrounds Mac at the end of the night. But as time goes by, as Mac continues to stretch the boundaries of our usually curt and low-key conversation, I realize that these glass walls are closing in on me and that I can hardly breathe in here. I can only breathe again when I see Danny, waiting by the door outside.

He watches me walk to my car, knowing that I'll be forced to arch an eyebrow if he escorts me. What he doesn't know is that I'd do the same if he ever stopped being so needlessly protective of his superior.

"Goodnight Danny," I say without looking at him.

"'Night Stella!" he waves and then I'm gone.

He's my favourite.

He's my favourite because I think he has enough smarts, enough kindness in his blessed little heart to remind me of a pre-tragedy Mac Taylor, and enough time to remind me that he has a chance to end up completely unlike the post-war Mac Taylor. The one who's still sitting in his office no doubt, who looks at me every night when I stop by, with the future in his eyes. With a kind of magic inside of him that's concealed only by that goddamn crystal ball.

Meanwhile, Danny lurks on the outside of the transparent wall, looking in on the man he longs to be. And when he turns back and walks away to solve another case, Mac looks at him and wishes desperately for something he doesn't want to name. I know though. I know. They're envious of each other. But there seems to be no balance between the broken hero and the hopeful prodigy. No healthy medium that's been discovered yet.

I'm waiting for Danny to age. For Mac to fall in love again. I'm hoping that one of them will find that equilibrium.

* * *

I have never been one for divination.

It's just not my thing really. I'm a scientist. I believe in factual evidence, and numbers and reasoning and rational judgment. Not to sound any more bitter than I actually am but disillusionment is really a ward-of-the-state thing. This is doubly-true when the state of which you are a ward of happens to be New York State.

Orphans have little time nor patience for fairy tails and magic. We're not big on pet psychics either. So don't get me wrong when I speak of these fantastic visions of who these people that surround me day by day will be sometime in the future. I can only give an estimated guess – extrapolate, if you will. And despite the solace I find in always have the right answer, sometimes I look at Danny and Lindsay and Sheldon and hope that I am terribly mistaken when their fifty-year-old selves are projected onto my bedroom ceiling.

In Mac's office, six days into October, I tell him of my visions, and I tell him which ones I like, and which ones I want him to chase away. My eyelids grow heavy by the time I am finished, but Mac seems wide awake.

"What do you think is going to happen?" I ask, scared something awful as I think of these children.

He shrugs and suddenly I'm overwhelmingly relieved. He would give me an answer if he had one, and he doesn't, and so I decide that if Mac doesn't have the answer, then there's no one on this slowly graying planet that does.

For once I kiss his cheek without feeling embarrassed, and the feeling rubs off onto him. We escape the glass walls that night at the same time. It's late, as usual, but for once I think that not every night is going to be this late.

As I walk through the door, my mind lets go of its premonitions, and I'm left with nothing but fond thoughts of these dear souls. These friends, and this fleeting _thing_ that drifts teasingly between myself and Detective Taylor. For once, there is time.

I know when the door closes, even as it does so soundlessly. Mac turns his key and then we leave this crystal ball behind.

I hang up my pendulum forever.

**fin.**

_July 2007_


End file.
